


That flesh is heir to (the Love, Blood and Rhetoric Remix)

by hesychasm (Jintian)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: remix_redux, M/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-02
Updated: 2006-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-29 20:32:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/323899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jintian/pseuds/hesychasm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ron's encounter at the Department of Mysteries has consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That flesh is heir to (the Love, Blood and Rhetoric Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [In Thy Orisions Be](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/6493) by Mad Maudlin. 



> The original was posted before Book 6, but my version incorporates some Book 6 details.

  
The whispering started in the summertime. Ron didn't notice it at first—it only crept in when he slept, when he dreamed, and then it was indistinguishable from the breeze shushing through the open window, the nighttime creaking of the Burrow, Harry's soft regular breaths. Ron would shift fitfully on top of his coverlet, the worn material caressing the wounds on his arms, but the whispering was never quite enough to rouse him.

Eventually, though, he began to hear it during his waking hours. Racing Ginny out of the house to meet Charlie in the yard, suddenly there was another noise beneath the rustling of the grass, scratching at the base of his skull. He pulled up short, turning round in search of the source, but there was nothing. Just the Burrow, his home, Ginny hugging Charlie hello, Hermione and Harry standing in the doorway watching him curiously. There wasn't even a garden gnome in sight to blame.

"Can you hear that?" he asked them. They shook their heads.

He finished a slow circle to find Charlie standing in front of him. "Let's have a look at you," Charlie said. He took Ron's elbow and pushed his shirt sleeve up to inspect the scars twisting round his arms. "Blimey, you're a right gallery of horrors." His fingers brushed one, and the whispering grew louder.

"You can't _hear_ that?" Ron persisted, pulling away from Charlie's calloused hands.

But no one could. Not then or that night when the voice finally grew loud enough to pull him awake, not the next morning or later in the week when Charlie returned to Romania and Ron wandered off before he'd Disapparated.

Harry had experience with such things, of course, but unlike him Ron couldn't parse out the language of this. Or he thought he might be able to, except the voice seemed to hover just outside of comprehension, like a sound he had maybe once known but now forgotten.

He didn't want his family, or Harry and Hermione, to look at him funny, so he stopped asking if they could hear it as well. But his attention kept wandering, and sometimes he would look at everyone and—and who _were_ these odd freckled ginger-haired people? What was this mad building they all lived in? The sunlight pouring through the open windows made him wince. And looking at himself in the bathroom mirror—so tall and gangly-limbed, his nose and lips and mouth, his eyes too bright, too blue. The voice whispered loudly then, as if arguing with his reflection.

"You're staring at me," Harry said one night, as they prepared for bed.

"What?" The voice hushed, and Ron blinked.

"Something wrong with my hair?" Harry brushed his fingers through the mop on his head. "You've been staring at it for the past minute now."

Ron shook his head. Had he been? One moment pulling on his pyjama bottoms, the next lost in contemplation, watching the blackness of Harry's hair swallow the light. "Sorry, mate," he said. "Must've been wool-gathering or something." He shrugged.

The voice began to sidle back in, gossamer thin.

"Ron," Harry said, and stopped. "Hermione and I—we were talking earlier and—"

"About me?"

"Well—yeah. Hermione was just thinking...about what happened to you at the Ministry...you know, with that brain thing—"

"Hermione thinking, that's new," Ron said roughly. He yanked the faded Cannons bedspread back and slid beneath it. The nights had been getting cold lately, for some reason. "She's always going on like one or both of us is at death's door." Harry blanched, and Ron said hurriedly, "Bloody hell, that came out wrong—"

But the whispering seemed to approve, seemed to be saying, _Well done, well played, distraction is the key to secrecy_...

"Look, mate," Ron said, as bracingly as he could. "I'm fine. No need to worry about me. Nothing happened during that whole thing that I couldn't handle."

Harry nodded slowly. He _wanted_ to believe Ron was fine, Ron saw. He needed to know that even if Sirius was gone, even if that had been his fault, his other friends had gotten out alive and well. No real harm done to them; the next battle with Voldemort could freely commence.

But then Ron started to _see_ things as well as hear them, and this he truly understood had to be kept from the others. Things like dark-complexioned men, sometimes just out of the corner of his eye, and once when he looked in the mirror his image changed. Blink of an eye, a strange black-haired boy with burning eyes was standing there staring at him and then blink, he was Ron Weasley again. The face had the feel of someone he had once met years before: familiar, but distant.

But what frightened him was that his own face had that feel as well.

"You look as though you've just seen a ghost," the mirror remarked.

"Shut it," Ron growled, slamming out of the bathroom. After that, he began to avoid looking directly at his reflection.

At night, in his dreams, he followed the whispering down the dark, dusty corridors of the Order's headquarters. The walls were covered with sleeping portraits, and he stopped in front of the one of Mrs. Black, lifted the cloth cover and willed her to open her eyes, willed it with all his soul even though he knew she would wake screeching, screaming.

He didn't know why, but he wanted her to wake, and when she didn't, when she slept on, he tore her portrait from the wall and ripped the canvas to pieces.

The whispering began again, scratching at the insides of his skull, and he turned to follow it through the shadowed house.

"Wait," Hermione said.

Ron blinked. Her hand was on his arm, her fingers pressing perpendicular to one of his scars. They were standing in the corridor of the Hogwarts Express.

"We're supposed to go to the prefects' carriage now," she said.

"Oh." He avoided her eyes, gently pulling his arm out of her grip. "Right, of course."

The train began to rock along the tracks. His arm throbbed where she had touched him, a strange pain just on the inside of his left forearm. He rubbed it absently as he followed her down the length of the train. By the end of the prefects' meeting, the pain—and the dream—had faded away.

*

Ron hadn't paid much attention when their O.W.L. results arrived that summer. Part of him registered dim surprise when, after breakfast in the Great Hall, Harry dumped a Potions book and cauldron into his arms and shepherded him through the crowds to the dungeon. He almost missed the worried look Harry exchanged with Hermione.

"I'm fine," Ron told them. "I'm _fine_."

He was a bit groggy, having lain awake that night long after the other Gryffindor boys had fallen asleep. He had felt that something was wrong, that he shouldn't be there, that the dormitory surrounding him was full of foreign shapes and shadows. The whispering scratched at him relentlessly, making him see things: at one point the snoring lumps in the other beds became different boys, and the beds themselves were different, and he knew it wasn't just the moonlight washing the draperies and bedspreads silver.

"Ron." Hermione reached across their table. "Your quill?"

He looked down. He was holding his quill in his hand. The quill was busily scratching his name from the inside cover of his Potions book in fierce, choppy movements: "-on Weasley" was almost obliterated by a gloopy covering of ink. The side of his hand was coated with it.

"Oh, Ron," Hermione muttered. She pointed her wand at his hand. " _Scourgify!_ " The ink disappeared from his skin but remained on the page, a black and angry blob.

"No matter," Harry said quickly, shutting Ron's book.

"It _does_ matter," Hermione snapped. "Something's wrong with him, Harry, and you've got to stop acting like there isn't!"

"Don't talk about me like I'm not here," Ron said.

Snape swept into the classroom at that moment. Black and billowing, thunder on his brow.

Ron fell silent. The world fell silent. All except for the whispering, which had suddenly become a furious, shrieking buzz.

 _Snape! Snape! Snape!_

Snape's mouth moved; he was standing at the front of the classroom, speaking, his black eyes flashing at every student, but Ron couldn't hear a word. It felt as though his heart was trying to climb out of his throat, like the voice in his head had grown a body, clawing to get free.

 _Snape!_

Black-haired men, a man, two men. Snape, Black, Sirius Black. Snarling, wands drawn. " _Snivellus_." Two men. Boys. Black-haired boys. Snape, Black. _Regulus_.

— _"I saw you," Regulus said, "with my brother."_

 _Snape's fingers twining up his body, his throat, into his black hair, pulling. "Your brother will get what is coming to him. As will you."_

 _His arm hurt and hurt. He couldn't breathe for the force of the kiss_ —

"Ron."

He blinked, and Harry was shaking his arm.

"We're to start cutting up the snake tongue now."

Snape was stalking round the room, swathed in black, his greasy hair falling limply over his forehead. Ron watched him, the knife barely missing his fingers as he sliced. _Severus_ , the voice whispered, and something in him yearned.

Hands trembling, Ron dumped the pieces into the cauldron just as Snape passed by with a sneer.

*

That night he stood in front of one of the mirrors in the Gryffindor boys' bathroom. The others were asleep, snoring beneath their covers. Harry had been the last to drop off, whispering to Ron occasionally across the space between their beds, about Quidditch and being an Auror and whether Ron wanted to walk down and see Hagrid the next day. Subtle pulse checks masquerading as feeble attempts at conversation—his worry had been almost palpable.

When Harry's breathing finally evened out, Ron slipped out of bed and made his way to the bathroom.

He had never quite worked out where the illumination came from—at night it dimmed into a soft golden glow that seemed to emanate directly from the walls themselves, washing the surrounding stone of the castle into something warm and gentle.

The mirror was shadowy in its depths. As his reflection approached, it seemed as though he was looking at himself underwater, floating toward the surface.

Not _his_ reflection. Not quite.

The boy was black-haired, only just twenty or so, although built on a slighter scale. There was a feverish intensity in his eyes, in the way he raked his gaze over Ron.

"Who are you?" Ron asked.

"Who are _you_?" the boy demanded.

He hesitated; for some reason he felt like giving his name would be like laying down a shield. "Ron Weasley."

"Weasley...then we're cousins. You _are_ a pureblood, aren't you?"

"Yeah," Ron said. He still felt a bit floaty, like his feet weren't touching the ground. He couldn't look away from the other boy's eyes.

" _He_ isn't. Actually, neither of them are. But the Dark Lord seems to be willing to overlook it, in his case."

Ron gasped. "You're a Death Eater!"

"I was." The boy rolled up his left sleeve to reveal the Dark Mark slithering blackly up his forearm. "Although I found it a bit more difficult to renounce my membership than I had hoped."

— _a crowd of bodies, masked and draped in black, and he knew that somewhere amongst them was Severus, and he remembered Severus pressing him into the mattress with each thrust and he was not afraid_ —

The pieces flew together in Ron's mind and suddenly he recognized the boy's face, recognized it because he had once known its kin and because he could remember wearing it, could remember _being_ the boy.

"You're Regulus," he said quietly. "Aren't you."

 _—what do you think my brother would say if he knew about you—_

"Beginning to understand now, cousin?"

"But you died."

"Yes, he was quite the dedicated soldier. Unlike me." A nasty smirk crossed the boy's face—but just before that, there was something else in his expression which Ron couldn't read, something that made Ron want to reach out and...and he didn't know what.

"Who are you talking about?" Ron whispered.

"The one who killed me." The boy leaned forward, eyes burning—if he _had_ actually been underwater he might have almost broken the surface. "Severus Snape."

 _—come with me, Severus, if we stay together they'll never find us—_

"How?"

"Oh, it's quite a story. Too involved to go into all at once, although I've been telling it to you for some time now. You ought to start listening."

"No." Ron shook his head, trying to dislodge the boy's gaze. "I'm finished listening. Bugger off and bother someone else."

"You bothered me first. I was nothing, don't you understand? No sight, no sound, no pain, no touch. And then _you_ came, snatching me back into life with your meddlesome magic."

"It wasn't my fault! I was Confunded or something—look, there's got to be a way to fix this, to get you out of my head—"

"As if you could be rid of me so easily. _I_ can't be rid of _you_!"

"So the feeling's mutual! We've just got to work together on this, see?"

The boy smirked again. "Do you think so? Only I hadn't realized before that you knew Severus Snape. That, I must say, rather changes things."

A cold feeling shot through Ron. "What do you mean?"

 _—Severus sneered. "You ignorant, naïve, pampered little brat, did you think this was some sort of game?"—_

"I mean, cousin, that you're quite right. We should work together." The gleam of the boy's eyes held Ron suspended, a fly in a spider's web. "But not in the way you're thinking."

When he moved, it was like a crack of black lightning. Ron thought he heard the mirror shatter, but he didn't even have time to think how impossible that was before the blackness reached through.

*

I'll tell you a story.

 _—he wandered out of the golden light and back into the dormitory, tumbling onto his bed._

We were just boys. Still mostly products of our bloodlines, of the houses we had only recently left behind. Severus was older by a year, both of us born in winter.

Sirius, my brother, was born in the summer, in the last sultry days of the season. I thought I hated him when he broke from our house. I thought I knew what hate was, swallowing my mother's poison like breast milk.

He certainly hated me for remaining her son. He called me a fool, and said I would live to regret the choices I had made.

I suppose time and events have proven him right.

 _—blinking against the sunlight as Harry pushed his arms through the sleeves of his robes, glaring over his head at Dean and Seamus and Neville. "See something interesting? No? Then piss off."_

My brother and I had become strangers to each other by the time I finished my first year at Hogwarts. When I arrived, he thought it might be an opportunity. He thought that once our parents became physically distant, their influence would be as well.

But I was sorted into Slytherin House with hardly a murmur from the Hat. And so I knew from the first that we had different paths to take.

Before we parted ways entirely, Sirius warned me away from Severus Snape. That was how I came to know him—through an act of defiance.

 _—breath thinning as Snape's contemptuous gaze slid across their table, locking with his for the briefest second before moving on, before leaving him. "Pathetic," Snape pronounced. "Do not think for one moment that I will allow you to save these imbeciles from failure, Miss Granger."_

Ah, but what did I know, truly?

I never had as much to prove as Severus. I had a blood traitor for a brother, but that was easily discarded. Severus? His blood was equal parts pure, equal parts filth. He was forced to discard half of _himself_. And I, fancying myself in love, I thought I could help him fill that emptiness.

I was a fool, I can see that now.

 _—Hermione, her glorious hair backlit by the common room fire, pleading with him: "Ron, just focus. Ron, please, just try."_

You see, I thought it was about love. I didn't realize until too late that for Severus, it was only ever about survival.

*

Hermione had a birthday, and Ron dimly registered that this meant the end of September was approaching. Harry bought her a book, some sort of theoretical history of something or other, and told her it was from both of them, but when she thanked them her eyes were hurt and knowing.

He had lost weeks in someone else's memories. Some days he was more lucid than others, and then he understood it was _only_ those sorts of days that gave Harry and Hermione hope he would get better. He knew it was only Harry, with his distrust of Dumbledore and the Ministry and anyone he thought had contributed to Sirius's death, who managed to keep Hermione from going straight to someone older.

They had argued about it one night when they thought Ron was zoned out and not listening, but later, as Harry and Ron climbed into bed, Ron said, "Don't let them put me in St. Mungo's with Lockhart and all of those other mad wizards."

Harry froze, his eyes wide. "Ron..."

" _Promise_ me you won't."

After a long look, Harry nodded. "I promise."

*

But it was getting more and more difficult to maintain control.

"Today," Snape intoned, "we will be brewing the Draught of Despair..."

 _—his fingers were long and clever, equally as sensitive to my mouth sucking on them as my flesh was to his touch—_

Hermione was shoving her notes at him; she had already plucked the Charms textbook out of his hands at the beginning of class, turned it right side up and put it back in his knapsack.

"You will work alone," Snape finished, and looked directly at Ron.

Regulus thrashed impotently, yearning. Ron glanced away before he could manage to do something. Stop it!

Regulus snarled back at him.

 _Amaranth stalks_ , he had scrawled in his notes. He got down from his stool, ignoring Hermione's surprised expression, and went to the front of the class. Heart drumming in his chest as he drew closer to Snape, those robes cascading from his crossed arms like black water. Ron stretched out his hand.

Snape picked up a bundle and made to give it to him, but at the last minute his wrist twitched. The amaranth stalks fell before Ron could catch them.

"Careful, Mr. Weasley."

They locked eyes again, and something in Snape's _flickered_ —and it was as if a tiny hook had caught Regulus and yanked him to his feet—

 _—sweat, stale sheets, pain-pleasure as Severus moves above and within me, grimacing as he groans my name—_

Snape took a step back.

Ron was abruptly aware of a sudden, painful erection.

Oh, Merlin, does he know? Can he tell?

"Return to your cauldron." Snape's voice sliced through the panic, and Ron turned and hurried back to the table, his cock rubbing exquisitely against the front of his trousers.

"What was all that about?" Hermione hissed when she got back from her own turn with Snape, dumping a new bundle of ingredients in front of Ron.

"Nothing," Ron muttered, as Regulus yammered and twitched. His arms hurt, the scars tightening like wire coils. The pain, thankfully, dampened his arousal, but when the class ended ages later he ducked away from Harry and Hermione in the corridor and hurried into the nearest bathroom.

Knapsack thumping on the tile, robes twitched aside, fly pulled open, hand yanking out his cock. He didn't think he'd ever been so hard in his _life_. He closed his eyes, bracing his other hand on the side of the stall, and imagined it was Snape wanking him, that Snape was pressing into him from behind, reaching round to encircle his length with a strong, sure grip.

Regulus babbled, _Yes, oh, yes, Severus, Severus, please—_

It took less than a minute. Ron slumped against the stall door, one hand tugging his cock, watching helplessly as his come spurted out onto the floor.

He was still trying to catch his breath when cramps lanced through his stomach. He fell to his knees, clutched at the porcelain of the toilet bowl, and promptly lost most of the toast and pumpkin juice he'd had for breakfast.

 _Soon_ , Regulus sighed. _We'll have him again soon_.

*

Regulus began to keep him from sleeping.

Ginny got in his face after a prefects' meeting. "Ron, you look like—"

"I'm _fine_ ," he snarled, pushing past her.

Harry went under his Invisibility Cloak to the hospital wing and pilfered one of Madam Pomfrey's sleeping potions, but even that didn't help. Regulus dreamed every night of fucking Snape, or talking to Snape, or fighting with Snape. One memorable night he dreamed of _killing_ Snape—Ron blinked awake and there was his wand, in his hand, pointed across the expanse of the dorm in the vague direction of Neville Longbottom's pillow. He unclenched his fingers and it clattered to the floor, rolling harmlessly beneath the bed.

He couldn't let himself fall asleep after _that_ , of course—although it wasn't difficult to stay awake with Regulus's mad cackling echoing in his ears.

He didn't notice what was going on in any of his classes besides Potions—but even there he was hardly paying attention to the actual subject of the class. Rather, he was hyper-aware of _Snape_ and Snape alone, whose mere presence would inevitably restart a cycle of Regulus's memories.

 _Bellatrix says He'll call us soon. Their numbers grow each night, she says. More and more wizards are beginning to comprehend the Mudblood threat. She and Rodolphus have been gaining positions of trust with Him. And Narcissa's husband Lucius is practically His right hand. I've told them about you and they've promised we'll be looked upon with special favor._

Something stung his knee and he clapped his hand over it. Blinked, and Severus—no, _Snape_ —was standing just inches away, and Harry was surreptitiously putting away his wand.

"Mr. Weasley," Snape said. These days Ron's cock stood at attention at the mere sound of his voice, which clearly loathed the name it had just been forced to pronounce. Ron blushed. Don't look at him, don't look, don't look. "I will speak with you in my office after class."

"Y-yes, Professor," he stammered, and Regulus crowed with triumph.

"I think he needs to see Madame Pomfrey, professor," Hermione said anxiously, doing her best to ignore Harry's glare.

"I did not ask your opinion, Miss Granger."

Don't look, don't look, don't look.

"If he tries anything," Harry told Ron savagely, as everyone filed out at the end of class, " _anything_ at all—"

 _Just which "he" do you mean?_ Regulus tittered.

"We'll wait for you in the corridor," Hermione said.

"No, don't." Regulus licked his lips, but Ron's mouth was dry. "I'll just see you at lunch." He watched them go, then turned and followed Snape into his office.

Snape sat behind his desk, Ron in the opposite chair. "Explain yourself, Mr. Weasley." His gaze was black and inscrutable.

Ron licked his lips and fixed his own gaze on the shelves: jars of eyeballs and tongues, claws and swathes of skin. Regulus struggled to speak, but Ron stammered, "I...I'm sorry, Professor, I reckon I dozed off."

He could feel Snape looking at him. "Are you prone to staring at people in your sleep?"

Ron's cheeks burned. He clenched his hands around the arms of the chair; he felt a wild urge to leap over Snape's desk and— But if he held on to the chair he could maintain control. Control.

"In truth, I would not be surprised if you were sleeping," Snape said slowly. "You seem to have developed an alarming propensity for staring at me while waking, after all."

Oh, Merlin, he knows, he knows! "No, I haven't."

"Do not lie to me, boy." Snape leaned forward. "Unlike some, I am not completely oblivious to my surroundings. Your behavior has progressed from a mild irritation to a disruption of my class and I wish to know why."

Regulus cackled. "I—I don't know," Ron stuttered.

"That is not an adequate answer."

"I mean it." Regulus cackled louder, and Ron shouted at him: Stop it! "I don't know," he repeated.

"Do you mean that you are ignorant of the contents of your own mind or that you are too incapable to explain yourself?"

"I mean _I don't know!_ "

Snape whipped out his wand. " _Legilimens_."

There was that same feeling of something hooking into his mind, and then they—he and Regulus, and Snape as well—were wandering the corridors of Twelve Grimmauld Place, lying in a hospital bed, fighting the brain thing in the Ministry—

—Severus, fifteen years younger, face warped by disgust. _"You ignorant, naïve, pampered little brat, did you think this was some sort of game?"_ —

—lying back amidst sweaty sheets, writhing against Severus as he thrust and thrust and _thrust_ —

And then it stopped, and Ron doubled over in his seat, gasping for breath. The scars on his arms screamed and bit into his skin and he tucked his hands into the crook of his body, but suddenly Snape was on his feet and wrenching up his sleeve, running his fingers over the scars with a cold skeletal touch.

Regulus surged forward but Ron pulled away, glaring.

Snape stepped slowly back. His face was pale, gaunt, hair hanging limply on either side of a shocked expression.

 _Ah, Severus, whatever happened to the boy you once were? Were you ever that young?_

"You may go, Mr. Weasley," Snape growled. "Speak of this to no one."

Ron grabbed his knapsack and fled, but before he'd taken two steps down the corridor Regulus overcame him again and he half-stumbled, half-fell into a little alcove behind a bust of Salazar Slytherin.

He was fucking _hard_ , he didn't _care_ if there were people passing by, all that mattered was the quick urgent grip of his hand and the look in Severus's eyes when he had realized, when he must have—when he had _seen_ —

"Oh _fuck_ ," Ron gasped, as the orgasm pulsed through his body.

He didn't know how much time passed before he finally heard steps echoing in the corridor and got up to adjust his robes, but the minutes before then were filled with Regulus: speaking, planning, plotting, remembering.

*

Regulus coiled in the back of his mind like a snake. Ron wasn't sleeping or eating, but Regulus was tireless, always ready. He would have understood what Mad-Eye Moody meant by _constant vigilance_. He—they—wandered about the castle like ghosts, one visible and one not, biding their time.

Ginny caught him passing the Great Hall at supper and plucked him out of his path like a dandelion. "I'm going to write to Mum," she said fiercely. She pulled him to the Gryffindor table and shoved a plate of food at him. "I don't care what Harry says."

"If you do I'll hex you blind," Regulus made him say, in a voice he had never used before, and he thrilled at the way she paled beneath her freckles.

"Ron, you need help," she said. "Don't you understand how much you're frightening all of us?" Tears welled in her eyes.

Sirius had been a blood traitor, easily discarded. He pushed the plate away and stalked out of the Great Hall.

*

The stones wouldn't move. He paced back and forth, scraping his palms along the damp stretch of wall, searching for a door that refused to appear.

"Adder...cottonmouth...viper..."

The stones were smooth and implacable.

 _—Ron, helpless, horrified, looked at the other students hovering round him, watching. All Slytherins. Stop! What if Malfoy happens by?_

Regulus snarled. Lucius wouldn't dare show his face. Too cowardly even to take part in my murder, even though the Dark Lord had ordered it.

"Cobra...boomslang...asp..." But the door to the Slytherin common room stayed hidden.

What was the password!

A voice broke through the fog. Familiar. "Mr. Weasley, what do you think you are doing?" Oh, yes, he knew that voice. Yes.

"...used to be right here...password...ashwinder? python? anaconda...stupid bloody password..."

"Mr. Weasley," Severus tried again.

"...salazar...no, salazar was...was before..."

Severus's fingers seized his wrist like a manacle. "Regulus," he hissed softly.

Regulus turned toward him and—oh, there. The knowledge in his eyes. The _knowing_. Time had not passed for Regulus the way it had for Severus, but still, the years condensed and struck him with the force of a thunderclap. There it was. _There_.

 _—Trapped between their gazes, Ron shuddered._

"Severus," Regulus said. "Severus, I've forgotten the password—"

His legs gave out, and Severus barely caught his weight in time. Through the fog he heard Severus instructing a student to go to Madam Pomfrey, and then Severus was holding him up, holding him in his arms, and Regulus smelled sulfur and smoke and cast iron. He tightened his grip on Severus's robes and pressed his face into his neck, breathing him in.

"Missed you," Regulus whispered. Oh, Severus, what fools we were.

"Weas—Reg—listen to me," Severus said. "You are very sick. I am going to take you to the hospital wing."

The words were altruistic, meant to provide comfort, but Regulus knew better than to trust the speaker.

"Missed you a lot." Regulus kissed his jawline, feeling the change in texture of Severus's skin from the last time he had done this. Such wasted years. "But you let them—let them find me—hurt—"

 _—a crowd of bodies, masked and draped in black, and he knew that somewhere amongst them was death—_

 _Let me OUT!_ Ron howled, and the blackness reached through.

*

They told him things he already knew: that the memories had come from the encounter at the Department of Mysteries, that they were struggling with his own for control, that they had to be removed if he was to get better. His mum and dad came every day to visit for a week, loudly and quietly worried about him, respectively, and after that it was just Ginny and Harry and Hermione who were allowed at his bedside.

Dumbledore stopped by once to personally explain the situation. The problem was, he said, that he _would_ attempt to Obliviate the memories himself, but he first needed to know whose memories they were. "Because you yourself are having problems distinguishing between the two identities," Dumbledore said, "there is a risk of losing your own memories along with the others. Even as I attempted to remove the wizard who is currently trespassing in your mind—or what I thought was the wizard—you could also lose parts of yourself."

"But there has to be a way!" Harry protested. Dumbledore had asked to speak to Ron privately, but he and Ginny and Hermione had begged to stay. "I mean, Ron is _Ron_. Whoever this other wizard is, wouldn't it be obvious his memories didn't belong?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "As I told you earlier, Harry, thoughts and memories are a complicated business. The scarring they leave is deeper than any other sort of wound. Perhaps if we had caught the problem earlier, before they became so integrated...."

Ron didn't know how Harry could remain standing—much less breathing—after the looks Ginny and Hermione shot him.

Regulus tittered. _Idiot Gryffindors_.

He didn't notice when they left, but some time later he woke to Harry whispering his name. He opened his eyes to see Harry removing the Invisibility Cloak in the candlelight.

"What're you—" Ron croaked.

"Shhh," Harry said. He carefully moved a chair closer to sit. "I just came to tell you...Ron, I just—I just had to say I'm sorry."

Ron grimaced. "Oh, bugg'r'off mate, not your fault..."

He was swimming in and out of awareness, just like the flickering of the candle. Dimly, he sensed Harry clutching his wrist—

 _—and pulling me down on top of him, on the bed, grinding up against me, his breath hot and harsh in my ear, oh, Severus, don't ever—don't ever—_

—and leaning toward him. "You've got to get better," Harry said. His voice trembled a bit. "We're going to find a way to fix this, I promise."

Ron wanted to answer, but Regulus had his mouth again and wouldn't let him speak.

*

When he came awake again, they were walking. He and Regulus, slipped out of the hospital wing in the middle of the night. Regulus was crafty—he had learned how to hide, how to escape into the shadows, even though in the end it hadn't done him much good.

Barefoot, he and Regulus made their way to the belly of the castle, where the chill of the stone went straight through the thin hospital pyjamas.

They knew the password tonight, because this time they were going somewhere different. Whispered into the keyhole of the door—" _Sectumsempra_ "—and it opened without protest. He shuffled inside, feet rustling on the carpet, moving toward a puddle of firelight spilling from another doorway.

"Severus," he whispered.

Severus sat hunched at his desk, quill moving over a sheaf of papers. "Who are you?" he asked, without turning.

Regulus struggled for control. "...I don't know."

Then Severus did turn, and said, "You are Ronald Weasley, and you have no business in my quarters."

He didn't move, didn't speak.

Severus licked his lips. "You are Regulus Black, and you have been dead sixteen years."

Regulus broke free slightly, breathed with Ron's body. Took a step forward, giggling madly, almost losing his balance. "I died the same year I was born...."

"You should return to the hospital wing," Severus said, but Regulus knew what he really wanted.

He took another step, swaying toward the fire, and Severus hurried forward to catch him. Immediately, Regulus circled his arms about him.

Ah, it had been so long. Between each time, it was always so long.

 _—a circle of bodies, and death—_

"You told them where I was," he said softly. "You let them find me."

"I did." Severus guided him into a chair. "I reported your location exactly as you told me."

"I trusted you." Regulus clutched at his robes, trying to draw him closer.

"You should not have." He pried his fingers away and took a seat opposite.

"I was frightened," Regulus said.

"You were pampered, naïve, idealistic and weak of both stomach and mind." His voice sliced the words like so many ingredients. "And you should have recognized that an oath to the Dark Lord binds for life."

 _But aren't I now made of other things?_

His right hand flew to Ron's left arm, rubbing the place where no tattoo had ever been. "It's gone now, though."

"It is," Severus agreed.

"It still hurts."

Severus gazed at the scars winding round his arms. "I imagine that it does."

"It hurt," he said. "But then...then it stopped. Everything stopped. No pain...no sight, no sound...nothing...not until..." His throat failed him suddenly, and he could feel Ron stirring.

"Why did you come here?" Severus asked.

"Why did you tell them?"

Severus leaned back in his chair. "I suppose I was frightened as well."

"And did you really switch sides, after?"

"I did," Severus said. "Not long after, in fact."

"Why?"

Slowly, Severus said, "Because killing you did not assuage my fear." He turned to his desk, capping the inkwell and setting aside the quill, gathering papers together.

 _Don't believe! He lies! An entire half of him is lies!_

Regulus reached out Ron's hands, running them up Severus's sides, the severe black cloth that was no different, really, from the schoolboy robes he had once removed from his body.

"I loved you, you know," Regulus whispered. "I still do."

He felt Severus stiffen. "You do not understand what you are saying."

"I do." The side of his neck still smelled of potions in progress, a scent that had only just begun to creep into his skin when they were boys, but there was something more deeply familiar as well, the first skin of another he had ever truly tasted. Boys together, and now no longer what they had once been. "I remember. I had to—there wasn't anything, no sound, no touch—but I remembered you."

Severus turned, slowly, and Regulus collapsed into his arms. "Even though I betrayed you?"

"Even though." Regulus giggled, lips on his neck, tasting him again, oh, it had been so long. "Madness runs in the family."

"It practically gallops."

He felt the moment when Severus broke just before it actually happened: telegraphed through nothing but a change in the air between them. Lips meeting, finally, bridging the dark canyon of years and death and acts that had led to death. Bittersweet, what he knew was in this kiss and what must have been in all of the other kisses, when he was too foolish to know what he was tasting.

Regulus whimpered and pressed Ron's body against Severus, and he answered their need and led the way into his bedroom. Ron's body was blind and desirous as Severus's hands undressed him and ran over his nakedness, learning and knowing and re-knowing.

"Severus, please." Arching toward him, _needing_.

Severus kissed him softly. "Roll over."

Regulus did as he said, pressing belly and cock into the starchy sheets, spreading his legs in anticipation. But then Severus's strong hands pushed his knees together; surprised, Regulus said, "What are you—can we do it like this?"

Severus's voice was rough. "Of course we can," he said. "Squeeze tightly."

Something warm and wet spread between his legs. He felt Severus's cock sliding there, hot and hard and slick, oh, how he had missed this feeling, and he tried to sneak a hand between Ron's body and the sheets to _touch_ —but Severus was too strong and too quick, knew him too well, and pinned his hands to the mattress so that Regulus was completely at his mercy.

Severus's weight covered him like black earth, the hair on his torso and thighs and at his groin scraping maddeningly against his skin.

"Severus, _please_."

"Patience," Severus ground out.

He pushed forward with his hips, and suddenly he was in, pain of stretching around him and Regulus crying out in triumph, and just as suddenly it was only Ron on the bed, only Ron being fucked by Severus Snape's cock, only Ron taking each thrust, only Ron, his head full of nothing but _ohgodohgodohgodohGOD_ —

He moaned before he could stop himself, and then Snape was pounding into him, driving him into the mattress, the starchy sheets scratching his nipples, his hands scrabbling for purchase. The sound of skin slapping against skin, and Snape's quick, labored breathing. Fucking him. Fucking him.

Sounds were coming out of Ron's throat which he couldn't control, and his own cock rubbed against the mattress even as he tried to buck up against the crushing weight of Snape's body, to throw him off and make it stop. But he was hard and each thrust created a horrible friction against the bed and Snape's cock was stroking a spot inside of him that made his eyes cross with the absolute fucking _pleasure_ of it and—"Fuck," Ron moaned, "oh, fuck, I can't—fuck—"

Snape's rhythm changed, faster, sloppier, and then Snape's hand came round and gripped him in just that way—just that way his own hand had _never_ quite managed to do—hot and knowing and impossible to resist, and the orgasm blacked out his vision, tearing from his throat with a howl.

He felt his mind shatter, that last thin barrier of glass splintering into a million shards, tumbling into the blackness.

*

Severus lit a candle with his wand, looking down at him.

"Love you," Regulus whispered, and the love filled his body, spilled over into the space between them. He gently squeezed Severus's hand.

"You should rest."

Regulus shut his eyes and snuggled closer, sweaty skin sticking together, letting the grey veil of sleep drape over them both. He was half-dreaming of a breeze in the window, whispering across his body and bringing scents of overgrown grass.

He heard Severus say his name, and opened one eye slowly to look at him. "Mmm?"

" _Legilimens_."

He felt the blackness of his mind split like a field before a plow. Severus drifted through without hindrance, following the swell of memories, the jagged remainders of the battle Regulus and Ron had fought. Some of it rose quickly to Severus's summons, easily recognized: a circle of Death Eaters, the green fire and black burn of _Morsmordre_ , Sirius at age eleven, the day he left for Hogwarts. Others were slower, weighed down by uncertainty: his family's house, which Ron had also known, a black-haired boy in a mirror, his mother's voice, the feel of Severus's body covering his.

Severus drew all of these memories and more to the surface, gathering them together, a tattered summary of two lives bleeding into each other. The most recent, the sharpest memories, were those that had occurred tonight; the others lined up behind them in frayed formation.

Regulus struggled, sensing Severus raising his wand next to him in the bed, but Severus had always been stronger. _No, please, I'm not such a fool_ —

His voice fell into the darkness like a knife. " _Obliviate_."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Kest and sophiahelix for quick, spot-on betas.
> 
> Comments and criticism welcome.


End file.
